Being a school counselor, I deal with the neglect and abuse of children frequently. It never ceases to hurt and disturb me deeply when a child has suffered at the hands of an adult that they love and trust.

Anyway, I had to deal with a horrific case of abuse recently and something one of the adults said to me about it really upset me. The child had made the first outcry to this adult who then came to me for advice on what to do about it. In the course of our conversation, the adult said, "It's a miracle the child told me---it truly is a God thing." My first thought was that yeah, it was a miracle. Then my next thought was----Where the *&$^#*& was God when this child was suffering the abuse? Geez, I sure am relieved that He decided to show up SEVERAL days later and work a freakin' miracle. REALLY??!!! The child could have been dead by that time! Then, true to my Christian past, I started feeling guilty. Maybe there is a God and he really does care....I thought.....for a split second. Then I thought, NO WAY am I going there again. I am too old and too tired to overthink this thing. There are brutal, mean, sick people in this world and there is no deity who stops them or intervenes for an innocent child. Case closed.

But, here's the kicker. I really, truly LOVE and ADMIRE the adult that said this to me. This person is an extremely compassionate individual who works with special needs children and treats them with kindness and an empathy that is astounding. This person is amazing in every way. I would never, ever say to them what I am saying in this testimony and I respect them immensely. In fact, it surprised me that this person said this because they had never mentioned religion before and appeared to me to be a freethinker. So, I was somewhat shocked that they made that statement.

It reminded me that many very intelligent, kind people believe that a God is in control and take comfort from believing that he/she cares. It leaves me feeling torn. On the one hand, I sometimes wish I could still believe like that, and on the other hand, I think it is ridiculous and harmful to believe such a thing. I want to do two different things at once---hug them and believe with them, and then yell at them about how in the hell they could believe that a loving deity would just sit back and observe a child being abused and DO NOTHING. (Actually, we did hug several times that day--it was an extremely stressful day and it's the human thing to do to support each other through hard times.)

Such is the dilemma that I'm sure all of us here at Ex-C experience from time to time. Sometimes I find it a very heartbreaking place to be. If people knew my secret thoughts when they say such things, what would they think of me? Or, perhaps they think the exact same thing that I do, but they hide behind the idea that God will take care of these awful situations. Or, maybe when they are in crisis mode, that's just where their thoughts automatically take them---a coping mechanism of sorts.

As for me, there is nothing that can explain away, or rationalize, or trivialize child abuse, or any other form of human suffering. Bottom line, that's what bothers me most about religion---how it minimizes and excuses suffering. This path of non-belief is a not an easy one, but I will never return to a belief system that glorifies suffering. I wish I'd never known that system in the first place! I wonder what that would be like---to never have to overcome and let go of all those falsehoods....wow....I can't even imagine it.....

Traditionally, Republicans tend to run on a platform of God, guns and gays. This time, it’s God, gyne-policy and gays – a set of urgent priorities straight from the mouths of conservative bishops and evangelists who call themselves Bible believers.

There’s no way to understand politics anywhere without understanding religion, but to an outsider American Christianity -- and so American politics -- can seem almost incomprehensible. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have quarreled themselves into 30,000 different denominations. On top of that, American Christianity, like American culture more broadly, tends to flout hierarchy and authority, which means that a sizeable number of American Christians consider themselves “nondenominational."

The ever faster splintering of denominations and non-denominations, from crystal cathedrals to house churches gives a particularly elevated status to the Bible, which is why, along with the Catholic bishops and charismatic preachers we find the Good Book in the middle of our public policy debates. “Bible-believing” Christians, also called “biblical literalists,” believe the Bible is the literally perfect word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. Thanks to the determined work of historical revisionists like David Barton, many of them also believe (very, very wrongly) that America’s Constitution and legal system also were founded on principles and laws drawn from the Bible.

Not all Christians share this view. Biblical literalists are at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from modernist Christians, who see the Bible as the record of our imperfect spiritual ancestors who struggled to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other.

A Christian’s view of the Bible often dictates social and moral priorities, which brings us back to the current political context. The Catholic bishops are well organized and so, under the banner of "religious freedom" (for institutions, not women), they have lead the charge against women's reproductive rights. But they have been able to limit contraceptive and abortion access in this country for decades only because FEB (fundamentalist/evangelical/born-again) Bible-believing Christians rally to the cause. In my home state of Washington, conservative Catholics and Bible believers rallied by the hundreds this week to protest against universal contraceptive coverage. As I write they are gathering signatures to reverse our historic gay marriage legislation.

Even though divorce and teen pregnancy rates are lower in more secular parts of the country, Bible believers see both as problems caused primarily by America’s loss of faith. To hear them tell it, from the time of America’s founding until the 1970s (when gays, atheists and bra-less women began tearing down the social order) this country prospered because we attended church and lived as God commanded, and our courts protected the righteous institution of biblical marriage. Now gay marriage laws are creeping across the nation, threatening the last shreds of our moral fabric.

Let me tell you a secret about Bible believers that I know because I was one. Most don’t actually know what lies in the nooks and crannies of their Bibles. If they did, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with the one they so loudly defend. Stories depicted in the Bible include rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations, captive virgins, and more. Now, just because a story is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it is intended as a model for devout behavior. Other factors have to be considered, like whether God commands or forbids the behavior, if the behavior is punished, and if Jesus subsequently indicates the rules have changed, come the New Testament.

Through this lens, you find that the God of the Bible still endorses polygamy and sexual slavery and coerced marriage of young virgins along with monogamy. In fact, he endorses all three to the point of providing detailed regulations. Based on stories of sex and marriage that God rewards and appears to approve one might add incest to the mix. Nowhere does the Bible say, “Don’t have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you.”

Furthermore, none of the norms that are endorsed and regulated in the Old Testament law – polygamy, sexual slavery, coerced marriage of young girls—are revised, reversed, or condemned by Jesus. In fact, the writer of Matthew puts these words in the mouth of Jesus:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law [the Old Testament] until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)

The Law of which Jesus speaks is the Law of Moses, or the Torah, and anyone who claims the Bible as the perfect word of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God should have the decency to read it carefully—and then keep going.

Polygamy is a norm in the Old Testament and accepted in the New Testament. Biblicalpolygamy.com has pages dedicated to 40 biblical figure,s each of whom had multiple wives. The list includes patriarchs like Abraham and Isaac. King David, the first king of Israel may have limited himself to eight wives, but his son Solomon, reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived had 700 wives and 300 concubines! (1 Kings 11)

Concubines are sex slaves, and the Bible gives instructions on acquisition of several types of sex slaves, although the line between biblical marriage and sexual slavery is blurry. A Hebrew man might, for example, sell his daughter to another Hebrew, who then has certain obligations to her once she is used. For example, he can’t then sell her to a foreigner. Alternately a man might see a virgin war captive that he wants for himself.

In the book of Numbers (31:18) God’s servant commands the Israelites to kill all of the used Midianite women who have been captured in war, and all of the boy children, but to keep all of the virgin girls for themselves. The Law of Moses spells out a purification ritual to prepare a captive virgin for life as a concubine. It requires her owner to shave her head and trim her nails and give her a month to mourn her parents before the first sex act (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). A Hebrew girl who is raped can be sold to her rapist for 50 shekels, or about $580 (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). He must then keep her as one of his wives for as long as she lives.

A man might acquire multiple wives whether he wanted them or not if his brother died. In fact, if a brother dies with no children, it becomes a duty to impregnate his wife. In the book of Genesis, Onan is struck dead by God because he fails to fulfill this duty – preferring to spill his seed on the ground rather than providing offspring for his brother (Genesis 38:8-10). A New Testament story shows that the tradition has survived. Jesus is a rabbi, and a group of scholars called Sadducees try to test his knowledge of Hebrew Law by asking him this question:

Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”(Matthew 22:24-28).

Jesus is too clever for them and points out that in Heaven, that place of perfect bliss, there is no marriage.

Having a brother act as a sperm donor isn’t the only biblical solution to lack of offspring. The patriarch Abraham is married to his half-sister Sarah, but the two are childless for the first 75 years or so of their marriage. Frustrated, Sarah finally says, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her." Her slave, Hagar, becomes pregnant, and then later Sarah does too and the story gets complicated (Genesis 16). But that doesn’t stop Abraham’s grandson Jacob from participating in a competition, in which his two wives repeatedly send in their slaves to get pregnant by him, each trying to get more sons than the other. (Genesis 19:15-30)

These stories might be irrelevant to the question of biblical marriage were it not that Bible believers keep telling us that God punishes people when he dislikes their sexual behavior. He disliked the behavior of New Orleans gays so much, according to Pat Robertson, that he sent a hurricane to drown the whole city – kind of like Noah’s flood. And yet, according to the Bible story, both Abraham and Jacob were particularly beloved and blessed by God.

The point is that marriage has changed tremendously since the Iron Age when the Bible was written. For centuries, concubines and polygamy were debated by Christian leaders – accepted by some and rejected by others. The nuclear family model so prized by America’s fundamentalist Christians emerged from the interplay between Christianity and European cultures including the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire. As humanity’s moral consciousness has evolved, coerced sex has become less acceptable even within marriage while intertribal and interracial marriage has grown in acceptance. Today even devout Bible believers oppose sexual slavery. Marriage, increasingly, is a commitment of love, freely given. Gay marriage is simply a part of this broader conversation, and opposition on the part of Bible believers has little to do with biblical monogamy.

Since many Christians haven’t read the whole Bible, most “Bible believers” are not, as they like to claim, actually Bible believers. Biblical literalists, even those who think themselves “nondenominational,” almost all follow some theological tradition that tells them which parts of the Bible to follow and how. Yes, sometimes even decent people do get sucked into a sort of text worship that I call bibliolatry, and Bible worship can make a person’s moral priorities as archaic and cruel as those of the Iron Age tribesmen who wrote the texts. (I once listened, horrified, while a sweet, elderly pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses rationalized the Old Testament slaughter of children with the same words Nazis used to justify the slaughter of Jewish babies.)

But many who call themselves Bible believers are simply, congenitally conservative – meaning change-resistant. It is not the Bible they worship so much as the status quo, which they justify by invoking ancient texts. Gay marriage will come, as will reproductive rights, and these Bible believers will adapt to the change as they have others: reluctantly, slowly and with angry protests, but in the end accepting it, and perhaps even insisting that it was God’s will all along.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington and the founder of Wisdom Commons. She is the author of "Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light" and "Deas and Other Imaginings." Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

I was raised in a Christian home, that of the fundamentalist variety. You know the kid in class, who does well in classes but is incredibly shy? I was that type. Unfortunately, I also had poor self-esteem, and when you combine this with a religion like Christianity, you have a recipe for disaster.

I had an alcoholic father, and his treatment of us wasn’t exactly kind (there were several occasions where our lives were threatened). What made my life easier was the rest of my family: my mother and sisters loved me to the point of spoiling, and a few years later my nephew became a good friend of mine.

We went to church regularly, prayed now and then, and I attended Christian schools. The latter became a norm for my before-college years. When I was little, I didn’t really care too much for Christianity or really understood it. I was more interested in the world around me: I loved nature and nothing made me happier than hiking or going to the zoo.

But things went further downhill. As I entered my pre-teens, I began to actually listen to sermons and the Bible classes at my school and started exploring Christianity. I fell into the trap the majority of children raised in Christianity fall into. I realized I wasn’t saved and became terrified, and so I prayed to Jesus to wash my sins away.

I felt joyful to be part of the “chosen”: I focused more of my time on Bible reading, watching religious shows and movies, and so on. I told myself god loved me, and I was a part of a group that I belonged to. It inflated my pride, made me feel special, and led me to think I was in possession of truth and goodness. It was like a drug.

And just like a drug, the pleasant effects wore out with the passing of time yet I was taking more of it to feel high but instead I was becoming depressed. I kept coming across passages I didn’t agree with: I knew I was pansexual, and when I came across the anti-gay parts of scripture, I was not too happy. But I made excuses for it and just tried to ignore my feelings.

Then came other parts that continued to disturb me: the numerous passages of god demanding (and committing)genocide, women being told to be slaves to their husbands, children and babies being slaughtered, and how god loves sacrifices, both human and animal (I loved animals ever since I was little, so you can imagine how I felt). All of this bloodshed and bigotry tugged at my insides.

Still, I was roped in by the fear of hell, and the anxiety and depression I had grew worse. My father was gone and out of our lives at this point, yet that relief could not erase my misery. I had grown in a sheltered environment and had pathetic social skills, with no one to talk to (even my distant relatives are Christians). I hated my fear, myself for being so weak, and thought I was being punished by god for my doubts. I ended up becoming suicidal, taking to drinking and drugs, and trying to escape reality. I ran away from home with the intention of killing myself (I did come back home), and after that I still tried to die.

After my last attempt and ending up in the ER, I was forced to go to counseling- now that I had someone to talk to, I felt better. I also went to the university (public, thankfully!), and I visited the library frequently. I began to read up on subjects I had avoided when I was a Christian: evolution, philosophy, about other religions, books about why the Bible is wrong and false, and actual biology. I also went online and found a wealth of knowledge, plus deconversion and freethinking sites (like this one).

All of this sealed the final nail in the coffin. I fully rejected all of my previous convictions with Christianity: I am not a sinner, just a regular human being who wants to live and find actual truth and understanding. There is no hell, no psychotic eye in the sky watching my every move and waiting to punish me. I took all my Christian items (except for one Bible which I keep for reference in order to refute something) and tossed them into the trash.

I feel like I have removed a heavy weight that had been suffocating me for so many years. Life no longer looks so dim, I no longer despise myself, and I now understand what it means to be truly free. The only regrets I have now are the wasted years I spent chasing a book (Bible) of lies, bigotry, and false promises, the damage I did to my health during that time, and the trauma I caused to the people who loved me.

I’ll always remember what one of my college professors said: Always ask questions and never lie to yourself. I will never lie to myself again.

1) The Basis of Overoptimism (or delusion): The writer points out that

"the few entrepreneurs who succeed spectacularly have biographies... whereas the many who fail do not."

Each of us, in our formative years, have heard it said that we can do anything; even become President of the United States. The idea has appeal because Presidents all have biographies that we know and study. But it completely ignores the fact that this country has been home to hundreds of millions of people, among whom 44 have made this distinction. (Yes. Your first grade teacher lied to you.)

Let us consider a common goal among Christians: "We are to be like Christ." Aside from having no idea what that actually means, I would submit that the goal itself is evidence of Overoptimism (or delusion). It is not outside the confines of reason to speculate that not even Jesus of Nazareth was "like Christ" in the way that Christians advertise. To emulate this idyllic image is, IMHO, an exercise in futility not only because it's based on a lie but more so because whenever someone tries to be like someone other than who they are, trouble is bound to follow.

2) A Symptom of Overoptimism (or delusion): The writer uses Steve Jobs as an example of one who typifies this condition. The writer sources Jobs' biography which states,

“at the root of the reality distortion was Jobs’s belief that the rules didn’t apply to him." He then makes a studious observation; "There was one reality Jobs’s distortion field optimism could not completely bend to his will: cancer."

I think that a lot of us Exchristians can relate to this. The reason we struggled with our faith was, invariably, due to the fact that the faith stands in direct conflict with reality. Whether one is speaking of cancer, evolution, gravity, the big bang, or disease control, such discussions cannot be held within the confines of faith.

The main reason for this is that the "faith" provides answers without investigation. Hence the problem with the child is not epilepsy, it is an evil spirit. When someone sneezes one must "bless" the sneezer who is afflicted with a devil. The flat Earth is at the center of the universe which God created in seven days. And misbehaving children are filled with Hell which must be beaten out of them.

All of that is fine and well for those who are not interested in reality. But for those who value it, such thinking and behavior based on the Overoptimism that "God said so" is simply baffling.

As an Exchristian, I have become a huge fan of reality. It has drastically changed my perceptions about myself and all of us. It has introduced a level of humility that I would never have achieved in a thousand years of trying to be like Christ. If you want a taste of what I'm talking about, consider the following dialogue from the movie "Grand Canyon":

Simon: Man, get yourself to the Grand Canyon.

Mack: Beautiful, huh?

Simon: It's pretty, all right. But that's not the thing of it. You can sit right on the edge of it. I did that. I did everything. I went down in it, I stayed overnight there. But the thing that got me was sitting on the edge of that big old thing.

Those rocks. Man, those cliffs and rocks, they're so old. It took so long for that thing to get to look like that. And it ain't done, either. It happens right while you're sitting there watchin' it. It's happenin' right now while we're sitting here in this ugly town. When you sit on the edge of that thing, you just realize what a joke we people are. What big heads we got, thinkin' that what we do is gonna matter all that much. Thinkin' our time here means diddly to those rocks.

It's a split second we've been here, the whole lot of us. And one of us? That's a piece of time too small to get a name. Those rocks were laughing at me, I could tell. Me and my worries. It was real humorous to that Grand Canyon.

If this Grand-Canyon-reality is not big enough and you think you need something bigger and more complicated, check out the universe. Once you're done exploring that and have a grasp on it, then, perhaps, it will be time to start thinking of anything beyond it. But I'd bet that you'd find other universes long before you ever found a god.

Why anyone would want to bypass reality and go straight to deity is unfathomable to me. This life and this place are beautiful enough.

My journey here is probably something like a clone of many of yours. Raised in a Christian home, by parents who were raised in Christian homes, went to Christian colleges and never questioned it. Church nursery ages 0-2 (where I'm told I was bitten several times and almost kicked in the head by a rambunctious older boy...isn't church such a peaceful sanctuary away from the world?) gave way to Sunday school, and by age four I was deemed ready to be up in the adult services (Reformed Baptists start them young).

Theology and dogma saturated every sermon; of course, I didn't understand it and would rather have been running around outside, but I tried to be reverent to avoid the disapproving parental glares, and believed whatever wasn’t too confusing. I sang all the songs about being washed in Jesus’ blood, felt guilty for making him die with my six-year-old evilness, and was appropriately grateful for being saved from the fiery tortures of hell.

With morning and evening services conducted by ministers and deacons who really didn’t know when to shut up (stretching them to 1.5 hours a shot), I’ve spent roughly 2500 hours sitting in a pew. That’s not even counting travel time (our church was half an hour away) or the weeks we attended prayer meeting. A hundred and fifty thousand minutes I could have spent learning to be a musical genius or something useful!

Not that the indoctrination ended at church. A homeschooler K-12, I was taught all my subjects from a Christian perspective (believe me, biology was…fun). All my friends came from church or the Christian homeschool group we joined (you’ve never seen so many jean jumpers). I sensed even at a young age that I was different somehow than everyone I knew; I became a loner and could usually be found in some corner with a book.

This is probably what rescued me. While my peers were succumbing to the brainwashing, turning into carbon copies of their fundamentalist parents and each other, I was reading, writing, developing the critical thinking skills that I would later apply to religion.

I can’t pinpoint my deconversion, but it was probably around age 12 or 13. In the beginning I still believed everything—I just didn’t feel any sort of divine presence in my life, and realized I never had. My default reaction was to assume that something was wrong with me…that maybe I hadn’t been predestined. Convinced I was going to hell, I prayed for god to just make me a Christian. I told him my heart was open and the holy spirit could waltz right in anytime.

It was only when nothing happened that I began to wonder if there was actually anyone up there. So it was back to the books; I dove headfirst into the study of religion, filled notebooks with biblical criticism, and concluded that religion was a manmade tool of fear and control.

Voltaire and Thomas Paine became my mentors through my teen years. I admired their courage, their nonconformity, and their dedication to dispelling superstition. Reason was, and still is, my guiding light.

After graduation, my parents gave me a choice: I could either live on-campus at a Christian college, or live at home and commute. They were still unaware of my deconversion, so I suppose they were reluctant to have me mixing with “unbelievers” and being tempted away from the faith. I decided it was more important to get out of the house and start becoming independent. Christian college it was.

And what a Christian college. Mandatory Wednesday chapel (I sat in the back with the other hoodlums, headphones on to block out the call-and-response chanting). No vacuuming or laundry on Sundays. Dancing prohibited (unless it was line dancing or some other kind that nobody wants to do). Core courses included Bible class. The halls were deserted on Sundays as students flocked out to church, while I stayed in the dorm and watched Christopher Hitchens debate Christians (he was brilliant) or read Dawkins or Harris.

I felt like a wolf among the sheep…but I didn’t attack anyone’s faith and didn’t proselytize freethought. Having other people’s beliefs forced on me turned me off the idea of doing that to someone else. If people asked me about my views on religion, I’d be honest, but most people just assumed everyone was a Christian and the most heated debates got was over denominational differences in doctrine—infant vs. adult baptism, predestination vs. free will. When these came up I usually just walked away. It wasn’t worth the fight for something I wouldn’t even be able to change.

My classes, however, were another story. My professors caught on pretty fast when I started writing papers for Old Testament class about how Yahweh was a megalomaniac tyrant who ordered genocide, or did a project on the topic of how there is a rational basis for morality, or (most telling) wrote the various “self-reflection” papers on my deconversion.

They mostly reacted the same way—they were sad, yet accepting, and offered to discuss religion with me anytime. Sometimes I took them up on it, but they had believed the Christian story so strongly for so long that it was clear I wouldn’t change their minds…and after all my studying, I knew that I could never find Christianity intellectually satisfying, so they wouldn’t change mine. I still think it was valuable to have those encounters, if only for the sake of helping both sides understand each other more, and I discovered that I could truly respect my professors even if it didn’t mean agreeing with them.

I dropped the bombshell on my parents over the Christmas break of my freshman year. Understandably, they were shocked and there were tears, but I was able to present my reasoning calmly and non-confrontationally, and they admitted that they had no answers for my questions. For them it just came down to faith and the work of the holy spirit. They probably pray for me every day.

Present day: I am eighteen, in my second (and last) semester at this school. Next fall I’ll be transferring to a non-religiously-affiliated college. I’m not yet sure what path my life will take, but as a humanist I believe change is up to us, and whatever else happens I’d like to leave this world better than I found it. This is not the power of Christ in me. This is the power of being alive…and being free.

Most of us grew up with “nice” stories of the flood that included an ark with cute, smiling, little animals overflowing the deck. And don’t forget the pretty rainbow at the end of the story that symbolized a loving god’s promise to us.

What about the terror of seeing your children and loved ones drown? Of seeing the floating corpses of your neighbors, family, and friends? The horror of feeling your lungs burning as you gasp for air and just breathe in water, knowing you are going to die? Of clinging to floating debris only to die a long slow death of exposure and/or starvation? Hmmm, not such a “cute” bible story anymore, is it?

Estimates for the population of the earth at the time of the flood range from 2 million people and up. The bible says god “regretted” making man. This indicates god isn’t omniscient and that he didn’t see this coming. Whatever. God decides to wipe out the wickedness of man and drown everyone but Noah’s clan. It didn’t work. Later on god is still upset that man is wicked. Way to go, god-who-can’t-make-a-mistake.

Now, if a craftsman or inventor ended up with only 8 good products and 1,999,992 defective products, I would say they would be a dismal failure. So Biblegod really screwed up. If he really was omnipotent and omniscient he wouldn’t have made the wicked ones to begin with, unless he just likes killing us. Of course, this can all be traced back to god creating evil and Satan in the beginning, but that’s another story… Any way you look at it, this is clearly a failure of the designer.

These people were spread hundreds of miles away from each other. Noah and his three sons spent close to a hundred years building a huge ark with primitive hand tools There is no indication in the bible that god did anything miraculous for the heathens to encourage them to believe in him. There is also no indication that Noah and his sons tried to reach out to the heathens and tell them about god, either. In fact, it would have been impossible for them to reach each person to evangelize them and still build the ark on schedule. So, naturally, genocide on a global scale is the only option available to god, right?

We can assume from a biblical stand point that all the drowning victims went to hell and are being tormented and tortured for eternity because they didn’t have a clue that Biblegod existed. Yeah, that sounds fair. Not.

I have an idea for a Noah’s ark toy complete with cute little animals and bloated rotting corpses.

In 2005, I was a deaconess in a small full gospel church, my husband was head deacon and together we did bible studies for couples and I was part of the music team. That year, my husband fell in love with his secretary and left me and our three kids, then 14, 7 and 18 months. As you can imagine, this was a very painful time in my life, but the worst was yet to come. My pastors talked to my husband and came to me, convinced his wandering ways were my fault for being a rebellious 'Jezebel' and that I should immediately submit to counselling and prayer ministry (read that, deliverance ministry). At that time I was desperate to save my marriage and I did submit, for a while. When the humiliation grew to be too much, I started bucking the system, only to be told I was in rebellion and that I needed to be 'under their authority' if I had any hope of being 'spiritually well' and saving my marriage. My husband had refused counselling, seeing through their motives and he left the church for good. Between the heartbreak over a broken marriage and the emotional beating I was taking at the pastors' hands, death seemed a better option. But I had three kids to look out for, so I summoned all the courage I could and left the church and the all the friends I loved in that church, behind.

The pastors warned the congregation not to associate with me because of my so called 'rebellion' so I didn't hear from them. At all. My dearest friends abandoned me because they were afraid to go against the pastors' wishes. It was indeed an especially lonely time in my life. I did, after some time, join another church where my children and I found some healing. I was even coaxed into music ministry and found some satisfaction in that for several years. What was the turning point for me? Pastors who still wanted to manipulate and control for one. Inconsistencies in what the church claimed to believe and what they lived out day by day. And then, meeting a man who was not a Christian but who is the sweetest, kindest and funniest person I have ever met. He respected my faith, but when we had discussions about Christianity, he would ask me questions that I could not answer. I mean, I could give out pat answers as I'd been coached to in church, but those answers sounded totally non credible as I tried to explain them. He encouraged me to think more deeply, to think for myself. I think every Christian has had their share of doubts and questions that their religion does not answer satisfactorily. And I began to question, why doesn't the church have solid answers......?

The lack of logical answers and the plethora of ministers who crave recognition or who are greedy or power hungry are the main reasons I left mainline Christianity and the church. That and the criticism and judgmentalism that goes with it. The 'we are better than you because we have Jesus' club. Who needs it? The hypocrisy is untenable for me any more.

So where am I in my faith? I am not sure. I'm slowly piecing together a new life on a daily basis. I'm happier not living on a steady diet of guilt and condemnation. I like owning myself again. Though it's been hard, I've tried to come to a place of forgiveness towards the Christian community. If they knew better, they would do better.....at least, I hope that is true. It's been a blessing to come across the testimonials here. It is comforting to know, I'm not the only one.

By Christianagnostic ~
More on the terrors of Hell visited upon my 8 year old imagination...

So there I was, mortally convinced that my destiny was Hell, with most nights of my vacation at the beach spent sleepless, and wondering if the devil was really red….

After our return from the beach, the fears of my future fate would drift to the background. I continued attending church, no further threats were made, and I graduated to a new Sunday School class with a teacher that was pretty fun (and no warts-at least none that he was willing to tell or show us). I began to figure that maybe, just maybe God knew that I was joking and that he would forgive me for my foolish utterance.

Later that year, fall began to set in, nightfall started earlier….and I began to retreat to my room to listen to top 40 radio and read the Bible. I came across a verse in which Jesus says that many sins will be forgiven, but that those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven. The unpardonable sin….oh cripes…all my fears of hell flooded back as I sat pondering_ had I committed the Unpardonable Sin?!

I read and read, trying to figure out if Jesus ever mentioned the specific sin-but I couldn’t figure it out. I was back in panic mode. That night my dad came in to tuck me into bed and say goodnight. As we lounged on the bed, I mustered the strength to ask him what he thought. I was super scared to admit that I might have committed an unforgivable sin, so I tried to ask my question in a dispassionate, but interested type of voice.

From the highest of heavens, only to be drug back down to the earthly realms and still living with the unknown dread of my future life……

It was probably another couple of months before I was able to quell my fears and just believe God would probably forgive me…every so often the fears came back, but the more I read the Bible and went to Sunday school, I felt pretty sure that me and God and Jesus were ok. That he would understand my foolish outburst and still let me into his heaven…at least, that’s what I hoped.

It's been almost two months since my cousin passed away. The only deaths I had experienced before this one had been my grandfather's, the unexpected death of a close friend's father, and a few pets'. Nothing I had been through had prepared me for my cousin's death, and only now, as I write this, does it finally feel real to me. I'm going to get into the heart-breaking details in the next paragraph. They're relevant, but I'll sum them up in the section after that, so please feel free to jump to the *** and skip the sad stuff.

My cousin had gotten married in 2008. About a year and a half later, her husband luckily found a spot on the top of her head; it was melanoma. For the next one-and-a-half to two years she got treated, obtained remission, got worse, went on a clinical trial, and finally died from the illness at the age of 27 (and less than a month from her birthday). During all this, she managed to finish her last year of pharmaceutical degree. Also during the ordeal, right until the end, I believed that she would fully recover because cancer was the type of thing that happened to other people. This line of thinking has never done me any good.

It might be a southern thing, but I've been told that cousins in my family are as close as siblings in some other families; I was certainly close to this cousin. Her nuclear family has always lived down the street from me. She was three years older than me, and her brother (8 months older than me) was my best friend until middle school (6th grade), so I have a lot of childhood memories of the three of us. Of the eleven cousins, she was the kindest one, the sweetest one, the one that always smiled (not eulogy talk; I've thought the same while she was alive). In retrospect, she was also a strong and determined person.

***Wow, I needed to get that out. To sum: She was an amazing person, I was close to her, and her death was both drawn-out and unexpected for me. Now, on to why I'm posting this on an ex-Christian site.

My cousin's family was much more observant towards Catholicism than mine. They always said prayers together at meals and before bed. When the end was in sight, they held a prayer service at a local church, and the guests nearly filled the pews. Venue aside, it was nice to see so many people that my cousin had affected gather together to support her and each other. We prayed the Rosary, and the pace let me fall into a nice, light trance.

My first "thank you" is about the prayer. Thanks to ya'll, I had already examined my thoughts about prayer and decided that expecting a response in this kind of situation was pointless. I didn't think that the mass (ha) of people had cast a divine spell over our ailing friend. I didn't have to deal with the crushing despair of disappointment adding to the sadness when she passed away the next morning.

The wake was a few days later. A small room stuffed with family standing around, friends of hers passing through, and an open casket in the back. Her husband handled himself so well that I was at a loss for how to talk to him. I was staring off at a wall at one point, and one of my aunts, the most "Christian" of us all and the one who isn't above suspecting demons causing foul play, came up to me with what I assumed was supposed to be a reassuring smile. She asked me, "Just trying to figure it all out, huh?" I paused just a bit and said, "There’s not much to figure out at this point."

My big "THANK YOU" is about that exchange. I didn't spend the days between the death and funeral wrestling with why God would take away someone like my cousin but leave other cancer patients. I already believed that cancer had killed my cousin and that doctors were just able to save other patients. She had died too soon, but that’s something that happens, and I was able to make peace with it before I even went to the wake.

I don't think that I would have blamed anyone; I would have probably come to the same conclusions that I hold to now, or so I like to hope. The big point is that I was able to reach those conclusions on my own time largely do to this site and the people here that share their stories and discuss issues of faith. I thank you all because I didn't have to suffer through both a crisis of faith and the loss of Lauren.

Misery. That is the word I use to describe my childhood. Sheer, awful misery. I lived in a house where I was tormented by an abusive stepfather who had it out for girls. My mother has three daughters, of which, I am the youngest. We got in trouble (and beaten) for the simplest things. We cleaned the kitchen, and he'd sit in there and watch us, waiting for one of us to screw up(i.e. miss a small spot while scrubbing) so he could "set us straight". We couldn't go to the bathroom after 9pm. We weren't even allowed to laugh. We all felt as though we walked on eggshells; our world was fragile. My mother would come to our rescue when things got too bad.

Then we moved. There was a church right up the road, so my mother thought it would be nice to start attending it. At first, we only went on Sunday mornings. As time went by, we started spending an usual amount of time in church. The teachings scared me. They taught us that everything that Mike was doing to us was actually a good thing. The man was, after all, the head of the household. Women were worthless.

Mike, with his abusiveness validated, upped the anti. He became even more hateful towards us. My mother, however, began to let it happen. We had lost her to God. She had been convinced that her place was not to protect us, it was to serve her husband and thus, serve the Lord. Our hearts were completely broken, and lives that had already been unnecessarily rough at times, grew to be so much worse than we ever thought they could be.

All of us girls were religious at first. We would sing songs with the choir and pay attention in Sunday School. The teachings, however, quickly became nonsense to me. I had too many questions. I didn't understand why so many things were considered evil. I didn't understand why we were to express so much hate and intolerance. It hurt me to know that all of the people surrounding me were actually wishing for the world to end. They were wishing that people all over the planet would die and go to hell. It tore my innocent heart in two, and I didn't even understand why.

Everything was just so backwards to me. God was supposed to love everyone, yet he was willing to let the majority of people burn forever in hell because they didn't believe in him. He thought we all needed to die because the devil tricked Eve into tempting Adam with an apple. He thought that Lot was a good guy for letting his daughters get raped instead of two angels when the angels visited Sodom and Gomorrah. He persecuted Job until he had absolutely nothing left just to prove a point to the devil. God quickly became evil in my eyes, yet I still believed in him.

My mother was completely taken over by her faith. She changed so much in such a short amount of time that she was barely recognizable to me. Everytime we did something bad, she would pull us aside and whisper to us "I don't think you're saved. Do you want to go to Hell?" Being children as we were, it was terrifying. God was, after all, an angry god, as she so often reminded us. Apparently, he was not above letting children burn in hell forever for something as minor as misbehaving in the grocery store. Not that I thought that was stooping low, after his other offenses.

When I was ten, my sister got into a fight with my stepfather, and was kicked out of the house in short order. She was just fourteen years old. After Amber left, the focus started to shift towards my other sister, Kristin. Kristin moved out as soon as she turned fourteen. I was the only one left. I found myself keeping to myself more often than not. I would stay in my room, at war with my thoughts on what I did so wrong that god would decide that I am worthless. Why was I doomed to be nothing but a slave to a man, who, from my experiences, would beat my future children and treat me like a doormat? Why was it good for me to behave that way?

Out of my siblings, I was the most compliant, so I stayed in that hell for the longest. However, since the magic number was fourteen, Mike decided that I needed to go then too. He came upstairs and beat the absolute crap out of me. He kicked my ribs and bruised them. He hit me in the face and my nose was bloody. He hit me across the arms with a belt and I had huge welts all over them. He, in this ass-backwards Bible Belt town, went completely unpunished when my own father tried to press charges. The sheriff actually told us that there were more laws to protect animals than there were to protect girls my age in my town. I stayed silent.

After moving in with my father, things calmed down. I switched schools, and started over. I had a lot of time to think about what I had just gotten out of. I had escaped a life of thinking that reading Harry Potter would send you straight to hell. I had avoided thinking that my place was by the side of a savage man with a serious beef with woman. I had come out of it, but not unscathed. My heart was deeply bitter, and the wonderful memories I was supposed to have of my childhood were all but nonexistent. I still believed in God, however. I clung to hope that he wasn't as bad as the bible said he was. I still prayed on occasion.

I did have major problems forming in my mind regarding religion though. I was disgusted by the fact that every Christian in this area will tell you that "wanting for worldly goods and material possessions is a sin", yet the bible tries to bribe you into heaven with promises of your own personal mansion and streets paved with solid gold. I also can't understand why anyone would be interested in going to heaven in the first place. In heaven, we are doomed to sing praises to God that I personally don't care for. Heaven is supposed to be a happy place, but how can we be happy there? How could we smile and sing praises, knowing that our loved ones who refused to believe in the same, horrible crap that we did were burning below our feet?

Skip ahead in time, if you will, to the time I was twenty. I had married a man named Daniel, and on our honeymoon, I had conceived our first child, a boy. I had, at this point, already fallen into the trap of my mother's religion again. I mean, sheesh, I was married at twenty! I had met Daniel when I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and from the point we started dating, my mother insisted we were living in sin. We were constantly pressured into getting married, and we finally gave in.

Seven months into my pregnancy, my son stopped kicking. I called everyone I knew to see if it was normal. Everyone confirmed that it was. I was told to pray about it. I waited. After twenty four hours, I broke down and went to the hospital. On January 2nd, 2009, the nurses told me that my son's heart had stopped beating. I gave birth to him on the 3rd. I had so many visitors it was unreal. Most of them told me the same things: That god needed an new angel in the fold, he was in a better place, and he probably had some awful, horrible disease or something, and god knew that and took him home early. I had a preacher come in and tell me that I shouldn't be mad at god. That he had gone through the same thing, god. He sent his son down to die for us, so he had buried his son too. I guess he thought that made everything ok then. He can take my child and get away with it because he killed his own child. Every ounce of faith I had left disappeared instantly.

I held my boy, and he was perfect.

I am now twenty-four years old. I am in the process of separating from my husband. I have a poor relationship with most of my family, as my mother converted the majority of them to baptists years ago. I feel like I can't be myself near them, that they will never know who I really am, and it breaks my heart. I'd be condemned by them all if they knew I've been an atheist for years and that I cringe every time they babble on incessantly about how great their god is. I will never have an open, honest relationship with any of them. How can I? I'd be disowned.

Perhaps one day, a few of them will open up their eyes. I don't have much hope that any of them will though. They are all too absorbed. Some of them are so far gone that I fear for their mental stability.

Three months ago, I was saved from Jehovah and Jesus. Now, the lyrics of Christian hymns dance joyfully in my mind. "I'm saved how I love to proclaim it", "...and the burdens of my heart rolled away...", "..Life now is sweet and my joy is complete for I'm saved, saved, saved"!!! I feel like I can breathe freely for the first time.

The one miracle in my life is that I escaped the clutches of that abusively patriarchal god. It took 50 years because I remained psychologically bound to my "God the Father" in spite of his psychopathic demeanor - his arbitrariness, withholding, favoritism, hardheartedness, egomania, perfectionism, and conflicting instructions.

I wish I knew how to explain to family and friends, but they won't hear. They're like C.S. Lewis' little dwarfs, sitting in the full sunlight, calling the light darkness.

The delicious sensations of my heart, the freedoms ringing that I no longer have to bow down and worship a god who will not love, will not protect, will not care for...and who is content to leave the world a vast pool of sufferings. With all my heart, I wish there were a god of kindness, but better no god than the god of the Bible - new or old testament.

Certainly, not all men fall into these categories that I will mention here, but you guys know who you are and should be secure in that knowledge enough to think about what I am saying about your "brothers".

The only reason any man is homophobic is his own mind on hormones. Just as in some cultures a woman must be covered completely, it is only the ugly testosterone driven thoughts of his own being that make him think in a lascivious way. He dwells on what goes on sexually. So because his own lack of control, his own failure at controlling himself, he has a feeling in the back of his mind that he might also be homosexual. He is afraid of himself. Being a "homo" is a big "NO NO" in his mind, but nasty thoughts of women are just "macho".

Not only Christianity, but other religious views support him in this thinking. So he then oppresses others by calling THEM sinners and/or temptresses. I think it should be called to your attention here that there are VERY FEW women who are either homophobic or lascivious in the same way as men are. If any women are perceived as homophobic, it is usually religiously driven. Here, again, I should point out that religions and their view points are All male driven institutions. Their hierarchies are mostly, very guardedly, composed of men. This is used, of course, as a means of control by imposing the thoughts and interpretations of one mind onto the minds of many.

I believe that ANY man who finds himself at the mercy of his own hormones should seriously consider having himself surgically castrated. This also should also be considered by those who wish to live a celibate life as they don't wish to procreate or marry anyway.

Just to set the record straight, I am NOT a man-hater. I am a 73 year old married grandmother who happens to hate bullying of any kind and I think this falls into that realm of thought.

When I was 16, I was an impressionable, credulous teenager who was lonely. I was taken in by a Church near to my home who introduced me to the Bible and to Jesus. They taught me the doctrine of Hell, and the idea that if I became born again, I would be saved from it. A sign that I was reborn, I was told, was that I would no longer feel the need to masturbate.

By now, my hormones were raging. I would pray, in my terror of Hell, that Jesus would deliver me from masturbation, but the urges persisted with a vengeance. I attempted to suppress those urges with pain by mutilating my arms with a razor blade, but it was futile. I lost sleep at night thinking that if the urges were still there, that meant I wasn’t ‘born again’ and so I was bound for Hell. I wanted to commit suicide but was afraid of doing so for fear of going straight to a place of eternal torture. I petitioned God to reach back in time and prevent me from ever being conceived so that I would never have existed in the first place.

Ultimately, I suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of 17.

I seek to educate people about the truth of this insidious doctrine and appeal to Christian ministries around the world to cease and desist promoting this cruelty. It is my learned and experienced opinion that this teaching is evil, primitive, sadistic, opportunistic, predatory and without any merit whatsoever. When inflicted upon impressionable adolescents, I believe that it quite possibly qualifies for child abuse.

This argument is a matter of reason and compassion. My wife is a qualified academic theologian (B (th)(hons)) and we ask the reader to consider our words in the context of his/her personal freedom and the threat that this teaching poses to our democracy.

Masturbation is caused by a series of hormones known as androgens. An adolescent will begin to masturbate often before he/she even knows what masturbation is. The hormones are secreted into the blood at puberty and suddenly the urge strikes – overwhelmingly. It happens for a reason. Humans are genetically hard-wired for orgasm, which is how human life continues.

Repression of masturbation (or sex) indefinitely will also result in detrimental health issues. Studies show that abstinence can result in increased stress (climax lowers stress and blood pressure) which leads to heart disease – the world’s greatest killer! Orgasm has been shown to boost immune system function (Human Reproduction, Vol 12, 2200-2207, Oxford University Press) and is highly effective in the treatment of migraines and the alleviation of menstrual cramps.

A study in 2004 to show a causal link between frequent ejaculation and prostate cancer indicated that male orgasms of five times per week or more actually reduced the risk (Leitzmann MF, Platz EA, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC, Giovannucci E. Ejaculation frequency and subsequent risk of prostate cancer. JAMA. 2004 Apr 7:291 (13): 1578-86.) This had also been affirmed in studies by Professor Graham Giles of the Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, Australia in 2003.

A 1997 study at the Queens University in Belfast (among others) concluded that regular orgasms can significantly increase longevity.

For these reasons, nature gives us this overwhelming urge – one that is so powerful, it is almost never conquered even by the most zealous of Christians. Pornography will aggravate it, of that there is no doubt – however, it is not the root cause of it. Masturbation is purely biological in nature.

The anti-masturbation doctrine rarely ever results in anything other than the torment of innocent people, unwarranted guilt and hadephobia (the fear of Hell) and extremely busy psychiatrists. Guilt can arise from masturbation, but this is largely the result of the religious influences on our culture. The Bible has an effect on the views and feelings of all Western people, even on the most secular. Guilt over masturbation is not natural – it is acquired. One of the more famous cases of this is that of Kip Eliason, a 16 year old, deeply committed Mormon follower. Under the strict, anti-masturbation doctrines of his church, he found himself unable to resist the pressures imposed upon his body by his hormones. Filled with self-hatred over his ‘weakness,’ he took his own life on March 2nd, 1982. This is a true case of mind-control leading to self-torture, and the death of an innocent child.

The body is biologically conditioned to respond to self-stimulation. It is an inherent instinct. As a mere action, it has been shown on ultrasound that foetuses masturbate in the womb. THAT is how natural this is! After puberty, it becomes a matter of need.

Indeed, sex is a relational experience – as eating can be. To say that orgasm absolutely must only be shared with a partner can be likened to saying that a person shouldn’t eat unless they have someone to dine with.

One of the Christian arguments is that a person cannot become intimate with another if they masturbate. This is an absurdity. That would make 99.9999% of the human population sexually dysfunctional and yet we now live in a world of unprecedented overpopulation.

Prima Facie, it is difficult to imagine why an individual would attempt to pressure others into torturing themselves in such a cruel way. It is bewildering how the suggestion that teens and single people should abstain from masturbation isn’t viewed as a contender for the single most sadistic doctrine in history. It is to deny any form of sexual outlet to those who need it the most: to those whose androgen levels are 20 times normal, and to those who are lonely; to literally sentence them to a torment where they should strive to turn their own bodies into instruments of hormonal torture.

If masturbation (in males) is abstained from for long enough (around 30 days – after the necrotic cells have had time to release carcinogenic toxins around the prostate gland) it will be expelled in the night to the accompaniment of an involuntary erotic dream. Ejaculation is a bio-cerebral connection. This is how sexuality works, which is why people are drawn to sexual imagery.
It isn’t a ‘sin.’

A Question of Compassion

Understanding how the Christian God could give life to a species independent of its own request, shape it in such a way and then throw all of the rules in opposition to that design, under the threat of Hellfire to any who dare to disagree is a troublesome question – especially when He is described as a God of love, compassion and great kindness.

Matthew 5:28 (committing adultery by looking at a woman with a desire to possess her) is often quoted as the endorsement of criminalizing sexual thoughts, but in its historical context, it is actually a re-iteration of the tenth commandment – do not covet your neighbour’s property (his wife, included among land, oxen, ass, maid-servant, slave and any other chattel.) The word ‘lustfully’ as it appears in Matthew 5:28 is actually a fraudulent mistranslation from the original Greek. The passage is actually referring to ancient Jewish proprietary rights and the objectification of women, and has no relevance to twenty-first century teenagers masturbating to pornography.

In our civilization, we no longer view women as property, just as we don’t accept slavery as moral (as Jesus apparently did: Colossians 3:22.) It is also worth remembering that during biblical times, men married at an age considerably below today’s age of consent. It is arguably unconscionable for a person, (especially one who is married,) to suggest that single people must have no sexual outlet whatsoever and suffer it indefinitely, until they marry, which today can often be into their thirties, if at all.

No one person is guaranteed a partner. Such unions are the result of chance and can depend on many factors: financial, an individual’s self-confidence and in some cases, whether or not someone finds them attractive enough to marry. However, the libido is guaranteed and it will show single people absolutely no mercy! Relief is solely in their own hands – until religion pressures them into torturously abstaining.

It is also worth considering that Jesus went on to recommend castration in Matthew 19:12. Despite apologists attempts to retranslate this to mean simply ‘permanent celibacy’ (which is even crueller) the exact translation from the original Greek shows that the word ‘eunuch’ is clear and unambiguous. According to Eusebius, a man who was instrumental in the compilation of the New Testament, the early church scribe Origen of Alexandria, around the year 220 AD, took Matt: 19:12 literally and set about his own groin with a sharpened blade in response to what he read.

So how far is the fundamentalist Christian right prepared to take this? And once again – why? The history of the Catholic Church and its extra-curricular activities provides a good indication of what this particular brand of chastity-sado-masochism can lead to.

Masturbation can become compulsive for some, of that there is no doubt. However, these people are not common if they are taken as a percentage of the overall populace. Similarly, there are people who eat compulsively to the extent that they suffer obesity, high blood pressure and ultimately, an early death. It doesn’t follow that the remainder of the populace must embrace a policy of starvation. The more zealous Christians go as far as to suggest that all pleasant-tasting food should be avoided. St. Paul’s doctrine on people not ‘being mastered’ by their own bodies can lead to extremism as has been shown throughout the history of the church with practises such as self-flagellation. Most are mastered by food to varying degrees, yet some have clearly managed to overcome it, as shown on fashion catwalks around the world. But is it healthy? As aforementioned, there are serious health risks associated with overcoming masturbation also.

Despite the Christian claim that orgasm is for marriage only, it is worth remembering that St. Paul, the founder of Christianity as it is today, suggested that he wished for all people to remain unmarried as he was, going on to cite marriage as the refuge of those who were spiritually weaker. (1 Corinthians 7: 7-9.)

No one would even be able to debate this issue if Paul had had his wish.

He also repeatedly preached that people should flee all sexual desire and ‘deaden their bodily members to their passions’ (Colossians 3:5). It could be argued that these passages are encouragements of global genocide.

It should also be taken into account that when Paul said: ‘Take a wife, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion,’ a woman’s consent to being ‘taken’ was not considered to be a factor in Middle-Eastern culture.

For the most part, it still isn’t.

If Christians decide that they once had a problem with excessive masturbation, they have a tendency to inflict their policy of total abstinence on all others, where the idea that anybody can be different from them is unimaginable. They argue that they are only acting in the best interests of the people, but therein lies the dark side of the agenda. If the people unrepentantly refuse to comply, the Christian God will send them to Hell for not acting in their (hypothetical) best interests. Christians have always failed to explain how torturing somebody in fire eternally is in their best interests, which is surprising given that hypocrisy seems to have been the source of Jesus’ ultimate rage.

Given the malevolent nature of this God, it is difficult to comprehend why any person, other than an unimaginably extreme form of masochist, would wish to spend eternity with him.

Assuming, hypothetically, that masturbation had no biological function or health benefits, that it was purely a pleasure for the sake of pleasure; it is so very difficult to understand why a loving God would wish to deny his children this. To give them feelings, senses and an intellect and then demand that they ignore them poses serious questions about the morality and decency of this deity.

The Morality of the Bible

The Bible illustrates, in detail, God’s ‘perfect’ morality quite clearly with his ordering and endorsing slavery (the denial of an individual’s right to self-determination by another), the beating of slaves to death (Exodus 21:20-21), multiple accounts of divine-endorsed mass infanticide, including snatching innocent babies out of the arms of their mothers and joyously crushing them to death against rocks, along with tearing the unborn from their mother’s wombs (Psalm 137:9; Isaiah 13:16; Hosea 13:16), countless orders of genocide and the destruction and displacement of others, insidious cruelty to innocent animals, and most shocking of all to most (presumably because its easier to relate to) – the rape of thousands of innocent women, whether they were innocent young virgins as the spoils of war (Numbers 31:18 et al), or God-sanctioned rapes of innocent women simply to punish their disobedient husbands (2 Samuel 12:11-14; Zechariah 14:1-2).

In the Old Testament, these types of incidents are too numerous to list. However, in the New Testament, Jesus seemed to be in total support of them. He clearly endorsed beating slaves (Luke 12:47-48), Paul endorsed slavery (Ephesians 6:5-7 et al) and Peter demanded that slaves find joy in the unjust cruelty of their masters (1 Peter 2:18-21.)

Jesus endorsed all of the cruel laws of the Old Testament (Matt: 5:17-18.) These would include the rules that unruly children, homosexuals and anybody who eats shellfish or collects sticks on the Sabbath must be bludgeoned to death with rocks, how much money to charge for a slave (there was a requirement that females must cost less than males, by the order of God!) and how to identify slaves by driving nails through their ears (Deuteronomy 15:17), etc.

Jesus also implied that any who do not accept him as King should be slain in his sight (Luke 19:27.)

Once again, and exclusive to the New Testament, there is the doctrine of Hell.

Christian apologists use what we call the Trinity of Delusion to justify these atrocities.

The first is – It doesn’t quite mean that. This is a self-contradictory proposition. If we add up everything in the Bible that doesn’t mean what it says, then the entire book – God’s vital message to mankind – doesn’t mean what it says.

The second is – You’re taking it out of context. They will then offer either no alternative context, or one that is clearly manufactured with absolutely nothing to verify it. It is also worth noting that different apologists will offer completely different and often immoral contexts to the same biblical atrocity, all failing to present reasons for believing their position other than ‘We’ve just made that up.’

One of the World’s leading Christian apologists, Dr William Lane Craig, when asked about the morality of the slaughter of the Canaanite women and children under the orders of God, responded that those women and children weren’t really the victims. He said that the Israelites who had to commit those acts were really the victims and then asked the audience to imagine how terrible it would have been for them to have had to have done such a thing, (much like saying, “How awful it must have been for those poor SS Officers to have had to have slaughtered all of those Jews.”)

This affirms a statement by Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg when he said: “Good people do good. Bad people do evil. But for a good person to commit evil – that takes religion.” While Christian apologists don’t necessarily commit evil, it is very clear that they are willing to defend it!

The third and probably most transparent is the ultimate cop-out – You don’t want to listen, so I’m not going to explain it.

Despite these painfully weak attempts at reconciling the Bible with morality, there is no choice in Christianity. According to its tenets, people must follow the way, or they will suffer infinitely. This is the most immoral suggestion in human history. Firstly, a human being cannot commit acts of evil in a finite life that would merit INFINITE punishment. Secondly, the Bible doesn’t say that ‘acts’ are, necessarily, the offences. Beliefs are. What moral God of unconditional love, compassion and great kindness would judge a man on his beliefs over his deeds? And after giving him an intellect that would enable him to learn facts that either contradict, or find NO evidence for the extraordinary events claimed in his anonymously-scribed holy book?

In the case at hand, masturbation must be substituted for indefinite, unjustified struggle. Failure must be followed by repentance, or the penalty will be eternal torture.

For the majority of people, these teachings fall considerably below their minimum standard for morality. This is everything that the democratic West claims to be opposed to: cruelty, totalitarianism, and terrorism. And yet there are many democratic citizens who embrace these teachings, whose ability to reason has been compromised into accepting the denial of their very fundamental human rights on account of them.

Yet, they always seem so happy.

Christian Joy

The elation Christians display could be likened to the joy of the ‘Stepford Wives’ and is reminiscent of a scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, where a bearded prisoner was shackled to a stone wall in a Roman gaol crying out joyously: “Great race, the Romans!” – Literally worshipping his own captors.

There is a term for this. It is called Stockholm syndrome, which occurs when people are subjected to terror at the hands of others. Reports show that victims of kidnapping and hostages whose lives have been threatened by their captors can develop an empathy with those who oppress them (Nils Bejerot: The six day war in Stockholm New Scientist 1974, volume 61, number 886, page 486-487.) Accounts show how such victims have even provided legal defence for the terrorists who have held them at gunpoint for the very crimes committed against them, corresponded with them in prison, and have even gone on to marry them! They develop a joyous euphoria born out of absolute terror when their minds try to latch onto the hope that their captors ‘can’t be all that bad.’ This can eventually evolve into: ‘They’re actually quite good,’ until it reaches: ‘There must be a good reason why they’re doing this. I must help them.’

Similarly, Christians will go to any lengths to defend the atrocities of their imaginary God and attempt to justify why, in his loving mercy, he wants them to torture themselves with the ‘gift’ of chastity. This so-called ‘blessing’ is, in fact, the malady that presents itself as the cure, resulting in countless incidents of shame, neurosis and psychological damage, whilst those responsible continue to indulge the delusion of their born-again euphoria.

In several Islamic nations such as the Republic of Somalia, female children routinely have their clitorises cut away, without anesthetic or sterilization, as a means of preventing sexual pleasure and preserving their chastity. Infections and even death have been reported as consequences. (Lewnes, Alexia (ed). "Changing a harmful social convention: female genital cutting/mutilation", Innocenti Digest, UNICEF, 2005, p. 16.) This hideous procedure is performed upon them by female members of their own family - who have each endured it themselves. They celebrate it and consider it an honor, which pleases Allah.

This is yet another example of how religion can warp the judgment of individuals to the extent that they will embrace the most terrible atrocities being committed against them as acts of virtue, and seek to inflict those atrocities upon others. Similarly, Christians believe that it is a privilege to be ‘set free’ from masturbation and make a point of spreading the word to all others. It is, yet again, the celebration of sacrificing one of the most pleasurable and healthy of fundamental human rights, with no justifiable reason. Put another way: “The joy of being set free from freedom.”

The anti-masturbation doctrine so often appears to be promoted by individuals who have, in some way, experienced a sense of powerlessness in their lives. Having no control over one’s circumstances can be traumatizing, but to what extent is it moral to regain empowerment by seeking to control others and to leave a trail of mental anguish in one’s wake? There is no doubt that this teaching damages far more people than it ‘helps,’ given its astronomical failure rate. The proponent’s defence to this is usually to attribute that failure to the ‘sinful nature’ of the victim and indefinable clichés such as ‘They are not fully walking in the spirit.’

Advocates of the doctrine always claim that they are merely doing the ‘Lord’s work’ thereby establishing a continuous policy of zero-accountability for the harm that they cause.

Occasionally, they simply blame other churches. – “You’ve been damaged. I’m so sorry. We’re not like that…but you still shouldn’t do it!”

The Libidinous Power of Denial

One of the arguments Christians use against masturbation is that it is fuelled by pornography; an industry many claim is rife with the abuse of women (although there are even more first-hand accounts of porn stars to contradict those claims.)

If the claims of abuse within the porn industry are true (which seems to be highly questionable), the issue of cruelty on set must be addressed as with any other form of abuse. If an impoverished woman is asked to endure brutal sexual acts for the camera and told by producers and directors that she will never work (earn) again if she doesn’t comply, that is coercion, leading to compromised consent. Ultimately, it would be a form of cruelty, rape and terrorism.

But at what point does this heinously extreme view of masturbation NOT become cruelty and terrorism on the opposite end on the scale?

When Christian evangelists continue to promote the anti-masturbation message, we should take into account that prohibiting or shaming it will cause a conscious desperation for it, subsequently increasing the desire one hundred fold. Nobody wants anything more than that which they can’t have. It is likely even more arousing than pornography itself. Statistics show that pornography use among Christians is considerably higher than among the secular community.

This adds yet another layer of suspicion to this entire doctrine. In Catholicism, many believe that the masturbation rule was implemented as a congregation trap, with the knowledge that nobody would be able to live up to it. Consequently, this creates a continuous line of attendees at the confessional and tithe-offering repenters. If people can be persuaded to surrender their rights to their own bodies and thoughts, it becomes child’s play to persuade them to surrender the contents of their wallets.

The potential financial benefits of the anti-masturbation doctrine should not be discounted.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Masturbation is a natural biological function. This is attested to by a wealth of academic, medical research and knowledge. However, Christianity uses the words of unqualified, completely anonymous and falsely-ascribed authors from the Bronze Age, most of whom had a clear political agenda, to argue against that knowledge. In so doing, it inflicts unjustified guilt and shame upon the innocent and unlearned, along with maddeningly heightening their libidos. If the guilt-trip proves to be ineffective, it shifts its game to terrorism with the promise of eternal damnation.

There is a truly serious issue here if we value our freedom. Brainwashing negates free choice. Totalitarianism is the unlimited application of authority that strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian policies include restriction of movement, restriction of reading material and entertainment, and the prohibition of certain inter-personal relationships.

However, when people are pressured into embracing doctrines that say they have no right to their own thoughts (Exodus 20:17 and Matthew 5:28) and no right to their own bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19) under the threat of Hellfire for any who refuse to repent; that truly is, not only sadistic, but the final frontier – of tyranny!

Plato's cave allegory is a good one applied to the issues that separate believers and non-believers. I know I'm in a culturally derived cave. So I can reflect on that which I have been led to accept since I realize I'm in it, and this makes all the difference in the world. My conclusion is that I can only trust science to tell me what I should accept. Doing so allows me to think outside the cave, to question the reality I was raised to believe. Believers raised in their respective religious cultures are in the cave and in denial. They have accepted and now defend what they were raised to believe using a double standard, one for their own faith and a different one for the faiths they reject. But the problem is faith. Believers all defend the merits of faith even though faith has no method.

Sometime ago in the past in that cave during a dispute between prisoners, one of them said, "Let's test the idea," and the test solved the issue in dispute. Then as time went on human beings learned this is how to settle disputes, and science was born. With it arose the idea that we should think outside the cave, outside of our perceived realities, our culturally inherited ones.

The world got bigger too. People met and interacted with other cultures who had come to believe different realities with the same level of assuredness. Taken together, when we reflected on both science and a global world we began thinking outside the cave. We questioned our own culturally inherited beliefs in the face of different religious cultures, and we used science to solve the questions that separated us. It produced doubt, what I call the adult attitude.

You just want to have believers travel all over the world and debate their own religious faith against the myriad numbers of religious believers who defend their own culturally inherited faith, so they can see this for what it is. But even then that may not be enough, since believers can still look others in the eye and think they are deceived, or they need a "fulfilled" religion--the one they inherited from their own religious culture. Depending on their faith they'll even think these other believers will be condemned to hell for what they were raised to believe, simply because they were raised to believe it, which is at the heights of delusionary thinking.

When asked, Christians will say, "Only God can judge others," even though Sunday after Sunday most of what is preached is that only by faith in Jesus can someone be saved, and that non-believers will be condemned to hell. Listen, either they think God correctly revealed how he will judge people or they don't. Either they believe what is preached or they don't. And if they don't believe it then they should not attend churches where this false message is preached. I have never heard one single Christian look a good non-believing friend of theirs in the eye and say, "You are going to hell," which is the logic of what they hear preached. Not one. Christians always say to these friends, "Only God can judge." What, do they change their minds all of a sudden in the face of the harsh realities? The logic is there based on what they hear preached. So say it. Rejoice in it. God is good, kind, and just, right? Tell your non-believing friends the truth based on the logic of what you believe.

People of faith will also denounce science, saying that science has no method. But that is at the heights of delusionary thinking too, the likes of which I can only shake my head at. It's humorous to me. There are three responses to such a delusional attempt to level the playing field between science and faith.

The first response is that if science has no method then believers have the burden of proof to show us how it advances without one, and how faith solves anything. That cannot be done, just try it.

The second response is that if believers demand we prove with certainty that science has a method by poking a tiny pinprick of doubt about it, then this emphatically does not mean there is any parity at all between science and faith. It is simply amazing to me how believers accept things based on little or no evidence, things a child could easily deny, and in turn invoke a double standard upon people of science to prove with certainty what we have come to conclude. This is why I maintain believers must be shown their faith is nearly impossible before they will ever conclude it is improbable, and that is an utterly unreasonable standard. It is, however, the standard of faith, because faith is unreasonable.

The third response is that science is a human endeavor, and like any human endeavor there is a human element to it. So if science proceeds with theory laden data, probabilities rather than certainties, and is not done by completely objective scientists, then that is not the problem of the scientific method itself. Science proceeds because the evidence has a way of eventually changing people's minds. It is self-correcting by nature.

By contrast people of faith reinvent what they believe in every generation because of the need to continue believing in the face of scientific evidence and the harsh social realities. As human beings live longer it will become more and more obvious that that's what believers do. I've seen it in my lifetime. Science continues to advance while faith continues to retreat.

People who refuse to doubt are almost always fearful of looking at the evidence squarely in the face. They are like the prisoners in Plato's Cave. Fear and ignorance result when faith reigns. Faith imprisons people within their cultural realities, so to speak. It refuses to see them for what they are. Believers are fearful of leaving the comfort of their perceived social realities. They are fearful of displeasing their perceived divine realities. Because of this they are forced to deny what is clearly obvious. They must even deny science. It's time to wake up and think. It's time to grow up and become adults. It's time to throw off fear and superstition.

Help Keep Ex-C Online

You really don't think maintaining a site like this costs nothing, do you? Give a hand! Click the "Donate" button above to give one-time or recurring monthly donations. Or, choose one of the recurring donation options below and click the "Subscribe" button.